


little girl, you are not so young

by Windybird



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Americana, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other, Panic Attacks, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Self-Hatred, Self-Sacrifice, Unconventional Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:35:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24899284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windybird/pseuds/Windybird
Summary: Ellie sets out for the Fireflies after she kills Abby at the beach. She's not sure what she's expecting, but it sure as hell isn't Lev showing up halfway to California to join her, adamant that he join the Fireflies rather than stay in Jackson. And it definitely isn't the Fireflies sending them packing to Lincoln, Massachussetts, where there's only one man who knows where to get the equipment they need in order to perform the surgery.Whatever Ellie isn't expecting, it pales in comparison to what Bill is expecting when he opens his front door to see the little shit who stole his last adult magazine four years ago. Maybe not so little anymore.
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us), Ellie & Bill (The Last of Us), Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us), Ellie & Lev (The Last of Us), Ellie/Riley (The Last of Us), Joel & Bill (The Last of Us), Joel & Tommy (The Last of Us), Joel/Tess (The Last of Us)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 61





	little girl, you are not so young

**Author's Note:**

> that ending made me angrier than i could articulate so this is basically my response to neil fuckmann and his cohorts. we hate to see it!

Ellie sat in the water beside Abby’s corpse after she was done. Her fingers still felt sore and stiff five minutes after she had eased the last breath out of Abby’s throat, then ten minutes, then fifteen, but after a while she grew accustomed to the pain and focused on the waves lapping at her sides instead. It was cold, but not unbearably so; they were close enough to the shore that the waves dissolved into sea foam by the time they reached the sides of Ellie’s hips. It was the salt that was the worst of it- it burned as it entered Ellie’s scrapes, the cuts up and down her legs, the stitches that had opened on her abdomen when Abby pressed her leg against her torso to hold her steady against the ocean floor.

She made for shitty company now, Ellie thought as she glanced over. Under the water, Abby’s face seemed bloated, grossly distended though she’d only been laying there for less than half an hour. She looked almost unrecognizable without her braid, and Ellie found herself suddenly wishing she still kept it, so that she could take it herself. God, what was it they said in Battle Ghosts? “To the victor, the spoils?”

Probably she’d just end up stuffing it in some drawer, never to be seen again, but still. She would’ve liked the feeling of it in her hands, heavy, the plaits smooth as she ran her fingers over them. Like a physical reminder of all that she had suffered for Joel’s sake. All that she had done. Not that she was in danger of forgetting it.

“Abby,” came a voice from the boat, and Ellie jumped so hard she could feel her brain rattling in her skull. Wide-eyed, she slowly climbed to her feet and approached the boat. The boy was just beginning to stir, a moan of pain ripping from his throat as he rubbed at his eyes.

_Fuck!_ Ellie looked back at Abby’s corpse, still laying there in the water, and then down at her own body, mottled with bruises, the indentation of Abby’s thick fingers still painfully evident on her throat. She made a snap decision and lunged over to the other boat, grabbing her backpack before throwing it beside the boy in the first motorboat.

She revved the engine and forced the boat forward just as the boy finally sat up. Thankfully, it was foggy enough that she could barely see what was in front of her, much less behind. The boy rubbed at his eyes as he looked around, and Ellie felt a pang of something in her chest when she glanced at him. He was so skinny, she could almost see his ribs from underneath his shirt. Probably they didn’t worry about feeding the prisoners they’d strung up, but he couldn’t have been more than eleven.

His eyes widened as they landed on her face.

“You,” He gasped, his voice croaky from disuse. “You’re the girl from the theater.”

Ellie said nothing, only watched him warily. He didn’t have any weapons, and her backpack was safely tucked behind her feet, but that wouldn’t stop him from lunging over and attempting to shove her into the water.

Thankfully, revenge didn’t seem to be on his mind as he looked around, obviously disoriented. She couldn’t really blame him; the fog was so thick that she could barely see his dirty, bruise-ridden face without squinting.

“Where are we?” He asked finally, looking back to her. Then, more urgently, he asked, “Where’s Abby?” And then, almost as an afterthought, “Why are you here?”

Ellie hesitated. Though she was pretty sure she could swat him away like a fly if he tried to lunge at her, she didn’t exactly want to add “kid suffering from malnutrition” on her body count list. Still, she wasn’t about to admit that she’d killed his (what, friend? Mother figure?) _Abby_ when they were in the middle of the ocean with no shore in sight.

“I came here to find you guys,” Ellie told him finally, one hand casually resting on the engine and the other on her backpack between her legs, just in case she had to pull her gun. Worst case scenario, obviously, but better to be safe than sorry. “I couldn’t let it go after all. I was going to kill her, but she was dead by the time I tracked you guys down. I guess she’d starved or dehydrated or something. It looked like she had been gone for a while.”

Her voice remained steady throughout her explanation, if choppy and stilted, but if she had said she slaughtered Abby with a rusty chainsaw, she didn’t think the look on the boy’s face could be any more devastated. A broken sob emerged from his throat, and then another, and another, until he was doubled over in tears, murmuring Abby’s name under his breath as he clutched at the sides of his head, like his hands were the only thing keeping it from bursting at the seams.

Ellie knew the feeling.

“I’m sorry, kid,” she whispered, barely audible against the force of his sobbing. “I’m so sorry.”

But even she had to admit to herself that, had she had the opportunity, she would do it all over again. Break Abby’s neck in a thousand different ways. Tear her hair from her roots. Decapitate her and throw her head far, far into the ocean, where it would be chewed up by fish until there was nothing left but her eyes, staring up at a surface so unattainably far, she could see the stars in the middle of the day. Whether or not the boy was watching. Whether or not he screamed at Abby to get up, to fucking get up right now. Whether he screamed at Ellie to please stop. Whether he told her that he’d fucking kill her.

If he told her that, she thought as she watched him from across the boat, staring down at his hands like he’d never quite seen them before, she would’ve killed him right then and there. But he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t say another word until they finally managed to find shore, after nearly two days at sea, and even then, all he said was, “Okay,” whenever Ellie told him to do something.

Ellie sighed as she watched him now. It was going to be a long journey back to Jackson, and though she wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of having Abby’s prodigal son following her back, she wasn’t about to strand him in the middle of Buttfuck, California. Even if she had the sneaking suspicion that the rock she felt lobbed at the back of her head was his.

* * *

“What’s Jackson like?” asked the boy somewhere in Utah- Lev, he told her, though only after about a dozen thwarted attempts at conversation. They’d been traveling for nearly a month now, and in all that time he never offered a single bit of information about himself, though Ellie had already deduced by the shaky scars on either side of his face that he had been one of the Seraphites.

Ellie looked up at him from across the campfire, eyebrows inadvertently raised by this uncharacteristic display of loquaciousness. Struggling to keep her face impassive, she shrugged.

“It’s a town. There’s running water, electricity… people watch movies, they go to school, they ride horses. You’ll like it.”

Lev snorted derisively but didn’t say anything, which Ellie took as a tentative win. He stayed silent for so long that Ellie thought he’d fallen asleep, until he suddenly broke the silence again.

“Does that hurt?” He asked, and she didn’t understand what he was talking about until she followed his eyes down to her left hand. Down to the better part of her two missing fingers.

“Like a bitch,” She said bluntly, and though she was pretty sure she imagined it later on, in that moment, she swore she could see a ghost of a smile playing across his lips.

* * *

As it turns out, Lev doesn’t like Jackson, but since he’s put in with Gina and Percy who’ve been wanting to have kids since forever, it’s not really Ellie’s problem anymore. Still, she can't help but feel a vague sense of regret as she watches him trudge away, head kept down as Gina leads him down the road leading from the stables, Percy's hand pressed on the small of his back. He looks younger and smaller than before, if that's even possible, and Ellie feels herself jolt forward slightly, almost as if to stop them. But then Tommy's there, and she forgets all about Lev as he embraces her, pressing his forehead to hers in the same way he always had with Joel. The gesture makes Ellie’s throat feel so tight she can barely suck in air after he leans back to look at her, tears brimming in his eyes.

“Thank you,” he whispers, calloused hand still pressed gently against her nape. “I’ll never forget this, Ellie. Never.”

“Joel did the same for me,” Ellie mumbles. Tommy’s eyes widen in realization, and he takes her aside, away from the prying ears of the stablemaster.

“Did he tell you-?” He asks, and Ellie has to bite back an incredulous laugh. Of course Tommy knew before her.

“Yes,” she says, and then takes in a deep breath. This is going to suck. “And I’m going to go back to California and find the Fireflies after I finish things here.”

Tommy gets her meaning instantly.

“Ellie, no,” he says, voice more panicked than she’s ever heard him sound before. “You can’t. Look, just- come on, you need to put some food in you and then we’ll talk. Okay?”

“Okay,” She agrees, though she know it won’t do a lick of good. She’s had a long time to think about it, crossing states with a mute boy who most definitely thought about strangling her in her sleep. The only thing that really kept her tethered at all was Joel, and then she lost him. And then it was Dina, and then she lost her. What really was there to keep her from unmooring entirely, except the prospect that her life might have meaning after all? That she’ll return to where she was supposed to die all those years ago, and the world will have righted itself?

But she doesn’t say any of that. Instead, she allows Tommy to lead her to Joel’s house, and obediently eats the bowl of tomato soup he sets in front of her. They talk about Maria, who apparently has been pushing for a break, and about how Tommy is supposedly A-OK with it even though he’s apparently been wearing the same shirt for the past three days. And then the conversation switches over to Dina and JJ.

“They weren’t at the house, so I sort of figured they went back to Jackson,” Ellie says nonchalantly, like she didn’t have a panic attack in front of Lev when they walked in the front door and realized that everything had been packed up- everything but Ellie’s art room, which hurt worse than if Dina had taken it all with her and left nothing behind.

Tommy lets out a sigh, looking at her with a pitying expression on his face.

“You’re right, kiddo,” he says. “They’ve gone to stay with Jesse’s parents. I’m sure that if you walked over tomorrow, Dina’d be happy to see you. And JJ’s been fussy ever since you, uh, left.”

Ellie nods slowly, though the prospect of facing Dina after all this time is scarier than walking straight into a nest of clickers.

“Yeah. I’m probably going to see them before I leave, anyway.”

That was the wrong thing to say- a furrow appears between Tommy’s brow, deep and intense and so familiar that Ellie’s eyes suddenly sting at the sight of it. It’s the same expression Joel wore on his face whenever she did something to cause him a miniature heart attack, which was often.

“Ellie, listen to me,” Tommy says, grabbing her hands from across the table. “Joel sacrificed _everything_ for you to live. He would’ve killed himself for you in a heartbeat. He could talk about you all day and never get tired. He was… saving you was the one thing he was the most proud of. There was nothing, and I mean _nothing,_ that he wouldn’t do for you. That man loved you more than anything. He wouldn't want to see you sacrifice yourself for this. Especially not for this."

Ellie breathes. Slowly. In and out. It wouldn’t do for Tommy to see her break into tears right now.

“I loved him more than anything,” she admits in a whisper, not trusting herself to speak above a murmur. “That’s why I’m doing this. That’s why I _have_ to do this. I need to make his death mean something, I need it to be more than- than him being beaten to death by a psychopath with a golf club. Tommy, I still _see_ him lying there, just- just lying there, and I-“

But she can’t finish that sentence. Tommy nods slowly to himself, before getting up to his feet.

“Come on, kiddo,” he says, voice gruff with unshed tears. “It’s time for you to get some sleep. We can discuss this some more in the morning.”

He walks her all the way up to Joel’s room, though his limp is bad enough that they have to pause on the staircase several times before he finally makes it. Even though she doesn’t ask him to, he bends down and undoes her laces for her as she sits on the bed like a child. Kisses her on the forehead and tucks the covers around her before he leaves, shutting the light as he closes the door behind him.

She almost asks for him not to go, to lay beside her and snore comfortingly in his sleep, but she forces herself to keep silent. She’s not a child anymore. And besides, in this room, the memory of Joel is so poignant- even in the dark- that she swears she feels his arms around her as she finally, fitfully, dozes off. It’s the smell, she thinks. Of sandalwood, of a crackling campfire. She’d bottle it if she could. 

She wonders, suddenly, if Lev feels the same about Abby.


End file.
